


the woman you kn(e)w

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [6]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Secret Identity, Secrets, Strained Relationships, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24933718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Ethan and Mia don’t talk about it.
Relationships: Ethan Winters/Mia Winters
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789369
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	the woman you kn(e)w

They don’t talk about the Connections.  
  
Mia talks to Chris Redfield and Blue Umbrella and a bunch of other people with a dozen different badges and patches on their uniforms because they _demand_ answers- but Ethan does not listen in, does not even try to hear all of it. They have plenty of questions for him as well, but they’ve clearly already figured out that he has nothing to do with the Connections; mostly they just ask about the Mold and Eveline and what he saw them do, the range of mutations and powers he’d witnessed.  
  
Honestly, it feels a little good to put it all out to someone.  
  
After rounds of tests to ensure that they aren’t contagious, aren’t carrying anything nasty that they could pass on to anyone else, they are sent home. Ethan and Mia return to Texas in the same car Ethan left parked on the edge of the Baker’s property.  
  
Most of that ride passes in silence.  
  
They do not speak about what they have endured; they do not speak about what has been learned over the course of it.  
  
Ethan, for his part, is numb. He’s still trying to harmonize the fact that he’s going home, that the endless dark and mold of the Baker property is behind him. He focuses on the road, and he and Mia speak only for the most basic of reasons: “I need to use the bathroom” or “I’m hungry” or “we should probably stop for the night”.  
  
Nothing beyond that.  
  
Actually getting home is surreal: Stepping over the threshold and into the living room produces a feeling of familiarity and terrible strangeness, probably because of the number of times in recent history that Ethan believed that he would never be going home again, left to rot in a Louisiana swamp. That Mia is at his side only adds to the effect; before he had gotten “her” message, he’d finally been coming to terms with the fact that she would never come through their front door ever again.  
  
There are calls to be made. So many people have believed Mia to be dead- at least some have probably heard through the grapevine of her alleged return. They will be blissfully unaware of what Ethan has had to do to achieve this, and they will want details. Jesus fucking _Christ_ , they are going to want details.  
  
What is Ethan meant to tell them?  
  
For the first week after they return, Ethan and Mia keep the blinds drawn and the car in the garage. Ethan goes out for a grocery run, and nothing else. They had returned at night, and Ethan is reasonably certain that no neighbors know they’re home- yet. Ethan is still thinking of what to say to them, how to explain Mia’s absence in a way that won’t arouse any more suspicion than there already will be.  
_  
Maybe I should get **her** to tell them, since she’s so goddamn good at lying to people,_ Ethan thinks with sudden venom.  
  
But that’s not a good idea. Mia can’t explain her absence any better than he can, not without telling people where she was and what she was doing- and a babysitter going missing for three years wasn’t exactly typical.  
  
At some point, once the shock wears off, it occurs to Ethan that his wife had been placed as a caretaker for a child that had been made into a bio-weapon. It further occurs to him that Mia had to have at least _some_ knowledge of what the Connections had been doing to Eveline, experimenting on her and the… _Other_ girls like her?  
  
Ethan remembers that shriveled, child-sized corpse, the D-series. He remembers ruffling its dress, the hem flipping up, and seeing the name **DAHLIA** written on a tag attached to the skirt: A shriveled little girl in a little chair on a little shrine, created by a little girl of a later experimental series.  
_  
God_.  
  
Ethan wonders what little Dahlia looked like pre-desiccation, wonders if she looked like Eveline, wonders if Mia knew her too.  
  
If she didn’t _know_ , she had to at least have suspected.  
  
Not too long before she’d disappeared, Ethan and Mia had started discussing children and whether or not they should have some. Now, as he lies in bed beside her, staring at the back of her head, Ethan pictures these theoretical children and all of them are black-haired daughters with Eveline’s face.  
  
Eveline, the lab-rat. Eveline, the experiment.  
  
Eveline, the girl his wife had known was a bio-weapon and still participated in the program creating and guarding her.  
  
Ethan wants to vomit.  
  
Reality is like a punch to the gut. And the head.  
  
In the small hours of the morning, consumed with anxiety and uncertainty, Ethan’s fears over how to explain Mia’s absence and how to move past this (if that’s even possible) are centered around that original lie, that secret that Mia had kept from him from the moment they had met.  
_  
Who the hell did I marry?_  
  
There is a vast gap of difference between being a live-in babysitter and working for a shadow company that creates child bio-weapons. That Mia could stomach- that she could not only condone, but _participate_ \- in what the Connections were (and probably still _are_ ) doing speaks to a part of her that Ethan isn’t sure he’s ever seen before. It is a new and unexpected piece of the puzzle that he cannot reconcile with her.  
_  
I don’t know if I know her anymore._  
_  
Not really._  
  
Ethan stares at the back of Mia’s head, at the way her side rises and falls as she breathes in her sleep. There is a part of him that wants to grab her by the shoulder and wake her up and demand answers: _What did you know and **how** could you participate in this? How could you keep going knowing what these people were doing? _  
**_  
How?_**  
  
But he doesn’t.  
  
Ethan lies awake until the early hours of the morning, and then eventually falls into an uneasy sleep.  
  
He dreams of pale little girls with dark hair and wrinkled, dried skin stretched over their tiny bones.  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> So, cool story: That shriveled up little corpse that you get the D-Series arm for, apparently through data-mining there's information on her and others of the D-Series that didn't make it into the final game. Her name is actually Dahlia, and there were five or six other girls of the series that were precursors to Eveline.


End file.
